Are they talking about the Bordello?
Certainly they like football. to some degree, but being a part of an active supporter group allows them to play out their fantasy of living in some European or South American backwater where they can act and behave without fear of reprimand.
The establishment of active supporter groups were a great outlet for people to let out the stress and negative aspects of their personal lives in a unified manner, rallying around a unified passion that gives them hope and meaning.
These dickheads aren’t people who want to get drunk and release emotional and societal stress. These dickheads are using our game as a method to purely incite violence and act like a degenerate. I don’t think they honestly care about whether Melbourne Victory is successful on the field.
They just want to be tough and use football as an excuse to be violent and anti-social.
It’s more the fact that they’re tolerated as part of the active support leadership. It’s the same concept as Sydney United and it’s fascist crap. If you tolerate it and don’t clamp down on it, then you’re complicit. Why do we only see these problems in WSW and MVFC and none of the other clubs? We used to have a element in the Cove, maybe not as extreme, but the Cove leadership worked to bring everyone in and ensure it was obvious that fighting and the like was unacceptable.
It honestly isn’t that hard. Granted these people may like football, but the thugery they also love, is accepted and they feel like they have a place they belong and where they can start fights and bit people up. If they don’t belong, they’re not there any more and they’ll either split off or piss off. If they split off, it’s even easier to identify and deal with them.
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Brandon Bordello?
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I mean that’s the whole concept of the ‘casual’ movement that started in the 70s and 80s. The casual ‘sub-culture’ will always attract these degenerates who want to use the sport to fight, behave aggressively and display male aggression and thuggishness.
The Cove leadership has done very well to stamp this out, but wearing all black is an advertisement to people who see red. I’ve seen plenty of teenage ‘lads’ and ‘eshays’ within the Cove, who whilst probably do have an interest in football, as part of the lad/eshay sub-culture seemingly take advantage of the ‘casual’ culture of football. Now the majority of these ‘lads’ are probably going to grow out of this once their balls finally drop and they realize Lynx Africa is not an acceptable deodorant/body spray and will not attract women in their hoards, but there are a worrying amount of TNs and dry-fit clothing in the Cove.
Agree with this. Not for one second minimising or justifying what happened, but the connection to the weeks events leading up to it is clear and there’s no way it happens at any old game any other week. Those involved were front and centre wearing Horda and OSM gear, they walked in as deeply disenfranchised football fans but once there chose to become criminals who caused irreparable damage to their club, our league and our game.
I was still too numb to post about it yesterday, but the APL presser that took nearly 24 hours instead tried to frame them as opportunistic rioters who’ve been twiddling their thumbs since the last Freedumb protest or something. It missed the mark, but then it’s probably designed more to pacify sponsors and other stakeholders than us.
You could probably craft an episode of Aircrash Investigations or Seconds To Disaster outlining the individually insignificant things that all lined up and led to it unfolding in the manner it did. Though the root cause will remain a combination of individual and collective cuntishness.
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It’s not a deodorant at all. Just saying.
Oh I wholeheartedly agree.
It’s an assault on the nasal passages of anybody unfortunate enough to pass close enough.
Football Australia has taken the first substantive steps in tackling the scenes of violence that forced the abandonment of Saturday’s Melbourne derby, issuing Melbourne Victory with a “show cause” notice in the wake of the club’s fans assaulting a player, referee and camera operator.
The notice gives Victory 48 hours to show any mitigating factors over what seems likely to be a hard-hitting range of punishments for the pitch invasion which FA CEO James Johnson described as “horrific” and which sparked global headlines.
Saturday night’s match was abandoned after fans from the Victory active area stormed the field at AAMI Park, with Melbourne City goalkeeper Tom Glover and referee Alex King injured when hit by a metal bucket wielded by a pitch invader.
FA’s investigation, as the competition regulator, is running in parallel with that of Victoria Police into potential criminal charges, with images issued on Sunday night of a series of individuals police want to speak to.
A bucket filled with sand strikes Tom Glover head during the A-League Men’s football match between Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park
FA officials reviewed footage from the match and received detailed incident and match reports from the Match Commissioner, King and his fellow match officials, AAMI Park management, and the Australian Professional Leagues.
Having pledged to move swiftly in handing down sanctions, FA has a range of punishments at its disposal once Victory’s response has been received, including fines, the loss of points and having to play games behind closed doors. FA must also decide whether the game will be replayed.
“What we all witnessed on Saturday night can only be described as horrific and conduct that is not consistent with the values of Australian football nor the expectations of our community,” said Johnson in a statement on Monday morning.
“I have personally contacted Melbourne City Goalkeeper, Thomas Glover, and Match Official, Alex King, over the weekend. Understandably they are both shaken and are recovering from the injuries they received, and Football Australia has offered them both support.
“Our football stadiums must be safe places for our community to enjoy the game they love and our players and match officials to ply their trade. Football Australia had a responsibility to intervene as soon as the match was called off to ensure this matter was addressed with the full regulatory and disciplinary powers at our disposal.
Victory fans invade the pitch.
“The offenders who entered the field of play on Saturday night, causing havoc and assaulting a player, official, and cameraman have no place in our game. They are not welcome, and we will do everything we can to identify them and impose the sanctions they deserve.
“As we made clear on Saturday evening following the abandonment of the match, we will move quickly to properly investigate this matter and where appropriate, issue the strongest possible sanctions to the club and individuals involved. The show cause notice following our initial investigations is the next step in the process and will allow us to gather more crucial information before making our determination.”
Victory managing director Caroline Carnegie said the club was devastated by the behaviour of a section of the crowd.
“I’m disgraced and appalled at what happened last night,” Carnegie told reporters.
“We’ve tried to work with our fans in a number of different ways to make sure that they can be here to support the club and do it in the right way.
“I think last night shows us that we’ve come to a point in time where what we’ve been doing probably hasn’t been as successful as we’d like and we just can’t condone what went on.
“There’s only so many ways I can say it but the behaviour was appalling and we’ll stand up and be part of that investigation and see what happens as a result.”
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – DECEMBER 17: Fans storm the pitch in protest during the round eight A-League Men’s match between Melbourne City and Melbourne Victory at AAMI Park, on December 17, 2022, in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
“Financially it’s devastating for us if we don’t get our fans into a stadium or we don’t have our fans doing what they do best,” Carnegie said.
“But the people we don’t want around aren’t true Melbourne Victory fans because if they were, they wouldn’t have hurt the club the way they did last night.
“They wouldn’t have hurt the league and the sport.”
Two games at AAMI Park on Sunday went ahead without incident, as Western United hosted Western Sydney and Victory’s A-League Women team played Newcastle.
On Saturday night, both sets of fans had planned to walk out at the 20-minute mark as part of a protest towards the APL’s decision to sell the next three grand finals to Sydney. Fans of both clubs had been throwing flares.
But the situation escalated when a flare hit and injured a television cameraman, before Glover picked up another flare off the ground and threw it back.
Fans then rushed the pitch including the intruder carrying the metal bucket, which hit Glover, who was concussed and required stitches, and King, who also had a head gash.
The game was suspended for about 45 minutes then abandoned.
The APL released a statement saying the events “demonstrated that a small minority of people with criminal intent hide within our game”.
“This is a watershed moment for our game that demands a zero tolerance for the incidents that we witnessed last night and the kind of people that perpetrated them,” the statement said.
“Our clubs will work deliberately and exhaustively, hand-in hand with law enforcement agencies, and with Football Australia – as the game’s regulator – to ensure that our game can never again be used as camouflage for criminals.”
Glover will also be under the microscope for his role in the incident.
City said the goalkeeper was taken to hospital on Saturday night with “severe lacerations” to the face and suffered concussion.
But that’s the point. There’s elements everywhere, including the Cove, who think they want to go out and have a scrap, it’s just that they don’t do it. It’s because they know that the Cove leadership will come down hard and won’t protect them. Someone running into the Cove after stamping an innocent person’s head in will get turned into the cops, in the RBB and NT, they’ll get hidden, protected and then raised up as a figurehead for doing so.
You REALLY need to stop judging people by the way they look. Judge them by their behaviour, which has been excellent by and large. Not perfect but absolute worlds away from the worst elements of active in other groups.
I’m glad that people can see that the Cove Leadership has a level of governance and control that other large groups lack. We worked hard for years to achieve it and the current leadership group, though less expereinced, handle it the same way.
Those ‘elements’ within the home end always understood that actions which brought risk or issues to the Cove group were unacceptable and they acted in the Cove’s interests. It’s a very complex subject and not one I’m interested in providing details on in a public forum. Lets just say that we were always able to talk to them and they were aware of the value of listening.
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I look forward to a strongly worded suspended points sentence being issued in the coming weeks…
On the talk in this thread about criminal links within the MV active support - yes, there’s a good chance of a connection of some of the core MV group members in other criminal activity.
A personal anecdote - I went to the first match at the new AAMI Park back in 2010 (MV v Glory) as a neutral.
During the match, the North Terrace held up a banner “No Surrender - [name of Horda member]”. I was curious about the context - maybe he was going through some illness or family tragedy? Or maybe he’d just copped a stadium ban? I took a photo of the banner and a few days later when I went through my camera (this was before smart phones were common) I googled the name.
Do you know why they held up the banner? He’d been done for trafficking $4m in amphetamines and was in prison. There’s a news article about it from a major newspaper that’s still online today.
Fast forward to this past weekend - on Sunday, on an Australian active support Instagram page, there was a comment supporting the pitch invasion/attack on Glover from an account with a handle that looked vaguely familiar. Clicked the profile and the penny dropped; surprise, surprise, it’s old mate drug trafficker - out of prison with an account full of Horda pictures.
Also, the guy’s nudging 40 years of age. As pathetic as it gets.
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Great first post back. This is amazing, couldn’t write itself if it tried.
I feel like that’s something that VicPol would be interested in.
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Post less please.
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I am, by my own admission, a relative newcomer (SFC member for 6 years). So naturally there are bound to be some gaps in my knowledge on the history of active support in the A-League, and Australian football more generally.
Prior to Saturday, I knew what “OSM” stood for (the acronym that is, not the ethics/morals of that particular group); so when I saw people in “Horda” shirts entering the field, and saw that same word mentioned here a few times; I realised I had a bit a blindspot and decided to spend a bit of time yesterday educating myself on NT / Nomadi / Horda.
Now, we’re all aware of the mainstream media’s tendency to sensationalise anything to do with “football thugs”, so I went into this with some healthy scepticism for what I was about to read.
I also will admit I’ve not done a similar deep dive on “the cove sydney”, so for all I know we don’t have a completely squeaky clean history either (but I’m yet to see or experience anything to the contrary in the 6-7 years I’ve been part of this forum & club).
So it was off to the googles for me, where I entered “horda melbourne” into the search box.
Holy shit.
(Apologies if any this is stating the obvious to those who have been around a lot longer and were possibly involved in some of the incidents below)
The first article I found (which admittedly isn’t specifically Horda related) was from Vice, and introduced me to the term “casual culture” and to “Hosper The Horroble”.
A few quotes:
“Most of the time I didn’t even know who we were playing or even care. Just being with the guys was enough to get me pumped up blasted through the whole weekend.
If I was out the night before I’d go to a mate’s house and get on it, start the day with about five to 10 lines [of cocaine] and a cold beer. I’m not trying to glorify it but that’s how it was for me anyway, football made drugs fun again.
I think crews were started more as friends coming together, and then if people were looking for a fight, you had to protect yourself, your mates, and your city. At the start of my clip that footage of the news reporters, the Melbourne boys just went in Sydney’s end and did what they did. It was just like that back then.”
OK, so maybe that’s just one extreme example. What else can I find?
Next article was about Horda nicking the Yarraside sign, and four Heart supporters being charged after waiting in a carpark with baseball bats, balaclavas, duct tape & handcuffs; ready to abduct a Victory fan in retailiation.
Another quote:
“AAMI Park spokeswoman Jo Juler said a small group of Victory fans was having a negative impact on the game. “It’s just disappointing,” she said. "From our perspective we love the colour and movement but when it gets violent and they start throwing chairs and flares it is a concern.
Victory club officials declined to comment yesterday, but it has banned Horda members from displaying their banner.”
Next search result: a reddit post from earlier this year, where Victory fans (that the commenters identify as Horda and m3) went to an NPL3 game in masks to cause trouble, throw rock and flares.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Aleague/comments/u3fb30/npl3_incident_victory_at_white_eagles/
On it went, an SMH article from 2015 “Police slam hardcore soccer fans after clash following Melbourne Victory, Sydney FC A-League grand final”.
Quote:
“a number of Sydney fans had retired [to the pub] to drown their sorrows presumably and they were confronted by around 40 Melbourne Victory active supporters who, according to my officers, were pretty intent on having a blue”
I could keep going. I won’t. You probably don’t need me to, as this is surely not news to any of you.
It is pretty clear to me that Victory support groups, particularly Horda and Nomadi, have a long history of violence and criminal behaviour.
It is no surprise then that those first on the pitch on Saturday evening were sporting Horda shirts.
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“we demonstrate to our fans the reasons why we make difficult decisions,” he said.
Really? It’s for the fans, hang on it’s actually because we need new traditions, well actually it’s because we irresponsibly spent all the money and need some more.
Can this moron ever stop lying? He’d make it as a politician, maybe that’s why he did the deal with Perrottet.
Yup that section just shows he came out first and foremost with lies, then doubled down on them, and now they are pivoting.
Said it before that I’m usually not one to call for someones job but I don’t see how Townsend can ever have the trust of fans again and in light of that he should go.
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